#they’re in my top 10 best dumb and dumber duo

[artheresy]

The HSR events keep getting better and better if I’m honest

I like the Museum event moderately even if I played it a lil late, but I like those kind of management styles even if it wasn’t heavy on character

The Aurum Alley event was honestly kind of a joy for me again for the management elements but additionally for the debates as well as the expansion of some lore on an area of the Luofu and the IPC plus Sushang being a goof, seriously those debates were fun for me I don’t know why

Then the Aetherium Wars event was so fun and it was so nice seeing March and Stelle’s dynamic on display and being a driving force, the gameplay was fun and all the cheeky pokemon references bc they weren’t hiding the inspo at all it was just so endearing and the way we get to keep the Warp Trotter on the Express made me so happy

And lastly, the Ghost Hunting event has managed to be the best ever! Like Gui being silly with Sushang and Huohuo is a delight, it’s so character heavy and I love that, and on top of that one of the only instances I’ve seen of internet slang being used in a way that felt more naturally applied than forcefully cringe, like whether it was the insanely accurate comments and posts on Ghostly Grove (which dear god did the team and localizers do their research) or the way that Guinaifen talks using that kind of slang verbally, plus I do love the way they also end up using the ghost stories to further expand on the Luofu and its lore/world building

A h I hope this trend keeps up, I hope they stay this good even if they end up having some similar gameplay, I’m more here for storylines and silliness than anything and I’m already excited for the leaks from the 1.6 event and I hope we get to keep those too

[letterboxd]

Demented Suburbia.

Greener Grass writer-director-stars Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe share their favorite films while pontificating on extreme politeness, John Waters and The Swimmer.

New indie comedy Greener Grass is not the Netflix marijuana documentary Grass is Greener, but you could be forgiven for making that mistake after the directors of the former gave out free marijuana at a recent outdoor screening, according to their friend Jim Cummings (who makes a cameo in the film, and lurks on Letterboxd).

It’s been a case of watch-and-learn for other up-and-coming filmmakers, as Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe have stormed the 2019 festival scene with their utterly weird and wonderfully bonkers debut feature. Nobody is doing red carpet lewks like them, nobody else is handing out free weed (that we know of), and nobody else has made a film quite like theirs. Attracting comparisons to the films of David Lynch, Anna Biller and Tim Burton, but utterly at home in its own creepily perfect world, Greener Grass is the WTF-is-up-with-white-people film America deserves right now.

And it’s the culmination of years of creative growth for DeBoer and Luebbe, friends and Upright Citizens Brigade veterans, whose suburban moms Jill and Lisa first appeared in the Paul Briganti-directed short of the same name (for which they won the 2016 SXSW Special Jury Award for Recognition for Writing). DeBoer and Luebbe stepped into the directing chairs for The Arrival, another short exploring demented suburbia, while developing Greener Grass for television.

When a series failed to eventuate, they spun Jill and Lisa’s world into the feature film, landing on the unforgettable location of Peachtree City, Alabama, a real town built for the golf-cart lifestyle. Greener Grass hit the spot for many Letterboxd members at its Sundance premiere: “Just what I needed after seeing so many dark films!” was Alicia Malone’s reaction. “Unlike anything I've ever seen but … tackles ideas I have never been more familiar with,” wrote Karsten.

The story kicks off when Lisa compliments Jill on her newest baby and Jill, following suburban rules of politeness, hands the baby over to Lisa to raise. This is far from the strangest thing that will happen to a child in Greener Grass.

We needed to know where this wild duo get their filmmaking inspiration from. When we spoke with DeBoer and Luebbe they were in “high heaven”, having just held the LA premiere of Greener Grass.

Lisa, Dennis, their son Bob, their adopted daughter Madison (now Paige), and their newborn soccer ball, in a family portrait from ‘Greener Grass’.

What were some of the real-life ‘greener grass’ moments that inspired your film? Dawn Luebbe: There’s one story which Jocelyn tells about her aunt who was at a dinner party one night. She was in the kitchen talking to the host and complimented them on her apron—“that’s a cute apron!”—and the host took it off and said it “you must have it, take my apron.” At once she was like, “oh no, I just like it, I don’t need it,” and the host insisted and wouldn’t drop it. So that night Jocelyn’s aunt left with that apron. Of course, that’s just a very small example of politeness taken to the extreme. We took that general vibe and added to it and really blew it out.

Jocelyn DeBoer: I feel like we experience this at restaurants too. Dawn and I are from the Midwest, so we have a problem where no-one ever really wants to eat the last bite of something that’s shared. I do remember one experience where I was on a double-date with some acquaintances I didn’t know so well and we were eating sushi. Someone had those crispy rice things that have some spicy tuna on top and when the waiter brought it out, one of them fell to the floor. Our friend just picked it up and said “10 second rule!”. The waiter felt bad and offered to bring new ones and we were saying, “Yes, get the new sushi. Don’t eat that one off the floor!” But the person didn’t want to make the waiter feel bad and ate it right in front of them. I thought, ‘this is a Greener Grass moment for sure!’.

You’ve said elsewhere that you tried to avoid referencing other films in the development of yours, but can you tell us some films that you love, that peddle in the same story area of ‘demented suburbia’? JD: We always admit that we were watching Twin Peaks together at the time we were making our short, so there’s no denying that David Lynch is an inspiration to us. Mulholland Drive, of course. Blue Velvet, too. The two of us just love John Waters, he rocks.

DL: We love how John Waters satirizes suburbia but he also clearly has such love and adoration for it too. It’s our dream to strike the same balance.

JD: Yeah, we’re laughing with the people we grew up with, not just at them.

DL: I would say also Edward Scissorhands was another movie that was a point of reference in terms of the bright pastel color-block world, with this element of darkness filtering in.

JD: We love satires like Brazil, the visual comedy especially. We both loved that surreal world. Luis Buñuel, of course, with The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, has the sketch-like aspects in a narrative film we wanted to do. We could just go on!

Jill (Jocelyn DeBoer) and Marriott (Janicza Bravoin) in a scene from ‘Greener Grass’.

Greener Grass technically has a lot in common with great horror films—one of our members, Sara, writes: “This reminded me so much of Halloween with the use of voyeurism and the John Carpenter-esque score… Suburban moms are ten times scarier than Michael Myers”. So since it’s Hallowe’en, tell us your favorite, go-to horror films. JD: I don’t know if this counts as a Hallowe’en movie but I love Rosemary’s Baby. That and The Shining come to mind first.

DL: Those two very much for me too. You know, I have to admit that maybe until about five years ago, I thought I was not a fan of horror. I feel a little not in the best position to speak to that. I tried very much to cram in what I can and then I discovered I actually love horror movies.

JD: The funny thing is that no-one loves true crime more than Dawn!

DL: Yes, true crime is my greatest passion.

Which film turned you onto horror, Dawn? DL: I actually think it was Rosemary’s Baby. I saw that and thought ‘this is very scary and I love it’. This is more recent, but Get Out, too. I found the marriage of comedy and horror to just be incredible and the visuals in that movie, to have such a sense of cinematic comedy-horror, just blew my mind.

You gave some of the best lines to the child actors in Greener Grass. What was your approach to working with them to capture the absurd spirit of the film? DL: That’s so nice! We absolutely love Julian Hilliard, who plays Julian, and Asher Miles Fallica, who plays Bob. From the second we saw their audition tape, they so got the tone, the characters, and they just jumped off the screen for us. They’re so mature in a way. They understood the comedy and the tone in a way we did not anticipate.

JD: They took their roles so seriously. One story we love about Julian is how he had to fall in the pool and we shot that very early on. We told him we want him to fall just like a plank and we’re showing him YouTube videos of planking so he was practising it in the hotel pool. We went on the day to shoot that scene, and the take that’s in the movie is our first and only take. He just nailed it perfectly. A couple weeks later, we went to shoot the first scene of the movie, which is when he falls in the soccer field. We go to shoot it and Julian starts to fall in a hard plank, just like he did in the pool but on the grass. We were like, “wait, no no no, you don’t have to fall like that!” and he just looked at us and went, “but that’s how Julian falls!”

What streaming platform is Kids with Knives on? Seriously: we’re fans of films that build a complete world within, including the fake shows and commercials you see playing on television sets. Can you tell us some inside stories of developing those? JD: Those were so much fun for us to work on.

DL: These kids were just so incredibly enthusiastic and Jocelyn had them circle round and asked them what kind of gymnastics can you do, let’s see what you got. And then one after the other they were doing the splits, back-handstands… We thought, ‘this is great—Gymnastics and Knives!’ We should have been filming that.

We’ve really enjoyed showing your trailer to people for that ‘what-the-fuck’ reaction. What’s a bizarre film that you love to recommend to people? (We asked this same question to Daniel Scheinert who directed Swiss Army Man and The Death of Dick Long and he said Greener Grass.) JD: Wait, are you kidding?! That’s so nice, oh my gosh! The first film that came to mind is Dogtooth. I’m always curious to talk to people about that one. Dawn, what about The Swimmer? Have you seen The Swimmer? You have to. It’s the Burt Lancaster vehicle.

DL: It’s about a man who crosses his county by swimming across every swimming pool. I’ll just say: what you think the movie is in the beginning turns out to be very different to what the movie is. The protagonist changes quite a bit.

JD: One of the coolest things about how we’re travelling the world promoting Greener Grass is how we get to talk to people afterwards and they go, “Oh the movie reminds me of this, it reminds me of that.” It was the director of Fantastic Fest who told us we have to watch The Swimmer. We watched it on the plane and there is a scene where a man is kind of obsessed with the filtration system in his pool. Everyone is talking about how great their pools are the whole movie, so yes, this is like our movie, thank you.

DL: There’s also a passionate monologue about a hot-dog wagon that’s the best thing that ever happened in cinema.

JD: It’s fantastic!

What are your go-to comfort movies? How many times do you think you’ve seen them? DL: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory I’ve probably seen 500 times.

JD: I really love Dumb & Dumber. I’m also a big comfort watcher of the Sex and the City TV show but I don’t recommend the movies!

What’s a film you wish you had made? JD: I want to say Roma, but that movie couldn’t be more different from Greener Grass. I loved it.

DL: For me, I’ll say Waiting for Guffman. It has such a special place in my heart. I just remember when I was probably fifteen or sixteen seeing that movie in Nebraska and laughing so hard my stomach hurt and thinking, ‘wow, movies can be like this?’

What’s a beloved movie you couldn’t get into? JD: Now I just feel bad talking about other films in a bad way. I’m really glad this film exists—but personally I had trouble getting into the Wonder Woman movie. I think there’s a lot of cool things about it. Maybe I’m just over superhero movies.

Dennis and Jill share an extra-marital kiss in ‘Greener Grass’.

You told a journalist at Sundance that you “did have one storyline that you pulled late in the game in fear that it might be taking something too far. We still fight about that decision and Dawn is wrong”. Are you prepared to tell us that twist now?! JD: I don’t know why I said that because we just set ourselves up to be asked that all the time. We are not going to tell you what it is, but we can tell you one storyline that Dawn and I actually loved that we ended up cutting before going into production. In a previous draft of ours, Buck, Kim Ann’s husband, who she divorces and he starts to become a cowboy, shows up at a kid’s birthday party with a new girlfriend and all the women are gossiping about, “Oh no, did you hear Buck has a new girlfriend, her name is Pamela,” and, well, she’s just hair. It turns out when we meet Pamela, she is just a very large, floating blowout. At this time Buck was also trying to sell a jet-ski because Pamela can’t do wind. It was a favorite bit of ours.

We did a few script readings with our comedy writer friends and paid attention to what people laughed at and what people talked about afterwards. No-one ever mentioned Pamela. They didn’t say she was confusing, they didn’t say they liked her nor that they didn’t like her. And we were, like, for just a character who’s all hair to not be spoken about at all, it’s not a good sign and we should lose her. Since then, we had people who read those scripts and [said]: “Why is Pamela not in the movie?!” and we’re now “Well, damn. We don’t know!”

DL: Maybe we’ll make a movie about Pamela one day.

You were working with such a great cast of improvisers. How did you strike a balance between what you had on the page, and what they could bring on set; in what ways did they surprise and delight you? Not only your actors, but for the artists on set such as your costume and production designers. DL: We were just so blessed to work with these incredible improvisers; Mary Holland (Kim Ann), D’Arcy Carden (the school-teacher, Miss Human), Neil Casey (Lisa’s husband, Dennis) and Beck Bennett (Jill’s husband, Nick). It was such a gift. I would say the movie is probably 95% scripted, so it was pretty close to the script. There were a number of improv moments in the final cut that we absolutely loved. One of my favorite lines in the movie is when Kim Ann is sitting on her porch and Jill arrives and hands her a taco dip and Kim Ann asks “is it seven layers?” and Jill admits it’s only five and Kim Ann says “put it on the floor!” That line is totally improv’d by Mary in the moment. She’s just a dream.

JD: It’s true, our designers added so many things. It was something that we talked about from the very beginning, that we want there to be comedy in every frame of the movie. We love having Easter eggs. We found one after the SXSW screening. Dennis tells a joke at the soccer field and everyone laughs way too hard and he fancies himself a comedian. In the scene in Lisa’s living room when the kids are watching Kids with Knives and Dennis is sleeping, we found that the production designer Leigh Poindexter added a VHS tape that’s sitting on the coffee table that’s just labeled ‘Comedy’, as if Dennis has been studying comedy for his joke, which we thought was so funny.

Our costume designer Lauren Oppelt added so many little touches, but one we really loved: Nick is always wearing our family’s color, pink, and a very gender-normative blue. After Nick and Jill get divorced, he shows up in all beige to go get more pool water, but for the little logo on his polo Lauren embroidered a sad face. It was so funny. We loved that touch.

Finally, a question we’ve been asking filmmakers all year: which film made you want to become filmmakers? JD: It’s so, so long ago but I think for me it was Memento. I saw that when it first came out in the theater, with my Dad. I was just a child then but it blew my mind.

DL: Welcome to the Dollhouse. That was the first true dark comedy I saw where I was deeply disturbed by how much I was laughing. I want to make something like that too.

Related Letterboxd Lists

Sinister Suburbia: what’s really going on in that neighborhood?

Creepy Teenage Suburbia: “settings not limited to but including: high school hallways, proms, corn fields, religious dictatorships, convenience stores, football pitches, family compounds, back gardens.”

Films Directed by Women: Vanessa’s comprehensive—and growing—list of films directed by women.

‘Greener Grass’ is an IFC Midnight release. The film is out now in selected US cinemas and on streaming platforms. All production stills courtesy IFC Films.

[supercultshow]

Howdy all you Supercultists out there on the interwebz! I’m Bad Movie Professor Cameron Coker (BS in “Bat Nipples” with a minor in “Ice Puns”) and I’ll be posting my hype-tacular speeches every week along with some long lost speeches from past Supercult Shows!

This week winter has come at last to Supercult in the form of one of the greatest cinematic blunders in all of history: Batman and Robin!

Batman and Robin are back in the fourth film in the Batman superhero series and the second film in the series directed by Joel Schumacher. George Clooney stars as Bruce Wayne/Batman while Chris O’Donnell and Michael Gough return as Dick Grayson/Robin and Alfred Pennyworth, respectively. The dynamic duo are back to protect Gotham City from villainy, but when the cold-hearted Mr. Freeze and the enticingly toxic Poison Ivy attack tensions rise between the two heroes. Can the Dark Knight and the Boy Wonder resolve their differences and save the city from certain destruction? Strength Now. Courage Always. Family, Above All. Batman & Robin!

As of 2019, this is the first and only appearance of Batgirl in a live-action Batman feature film.

According to a makeup artist, Arnold had potentially deadly costume effects. The battery for the LED lights in his mouth would start to dissolve in his saliva and leak battery acid into his mouth.

“Curses!” -an actual line from this already silly film.

Michael Gough: one of the only person to survive all 4 original Batman films (the other being Pat Hingle who played Commissioner Gordon). What a bad ass.

Someone please tell me how all these diamonds somehow combine into a fuel source for a freeze laser.

George Clooney and his stunt doubles went through 50 rubber Batsuits.

After the film’s negative reception, plans for Tim Burton’s “Superman Lives” have been shut down. The movie would’ve been a first attempt to have a shared universe between Batman and Superman, with George Clooney reprising his role as Batman, and with Nicolas Cage as Superman.

Is this a miniature? Is this an overly indulgent set? Does the audience care?? Do the ACTORS??

You want to have plants take over the earth and I want to freeze the planet. Sounds like we should work together!

Two Words: Bat Nips.

This gang is apparently called the Golums, but we all know they’re really called the ‘We Love Neon and Blacklight Club’.

The Batman costume was a 50 lbs. (22.6 kg.) rubber body suit with a 40 lb. rubber cape attached to the headpiece. Batgirl’s and Robin’s costumes weighed 50 lbs each. Mr. Freeze’s weighed 75 lbs.

Oh Bane…it would take 15 years before films did you justice.

I mean, yeah, this movie is bad. But Arnold looks pretty snazzy in his polar bear slippers.

Did we mention that Coolio is in this film? Well…he is. It doesn’t make the film any better or worse. It’s just…a thing that is.

From the opening frames of this film you know it’s going to be a treat. The foam latex laden suit-up scene seems to linger just a bit too long on expertly modeled bird buttocks, bat nipples, and caped crusader cod pieces. The opening would fit just as well in a high-budget Batman burlesque show. Oh, how optimistic the 90s were. The original Batman directed by Tim Burton seemed like such a long shot and paid off spectacularly. Burton discarded the camp of the 1960s Adam West TV series and adapted the atmospheric gothic noir of the 1940s…which is apparently an era when Batman couldn’t turn his head and has no problem with just straight up murdering people. Tim Burton’s version of batman was so iconic that it defined the tone, color, music, and even dialogue choices for the entire character for the next 2 decades. The next three sequels, Batman Returns and Batman Forever, stuck to the formula of the 1989 original for the most part. In each the level of camp was slowly cranked up:

Batman Returns: Let’s take up half the Warner Brothers lot with expansive water-filled Gotham City sets! Let’s focus even more on the villains and really hammer home the tragedy and the childhood pain festering into megalomania! Not only that, let’s have TWO villains instead of just one! Let’s get a combination of real penguins, actors in fiberglass penguin suits, and puppets for the villain’s evil missile-toting penguin army! DID I MENTION THE PENGUIN ARMY??

Batman Forever: They liked the two-villain thing, so let’s do that again. We’ll get another two actors at the top of their game to play ridiculous, over-the-top, gothic cartoon characters! Let’s go with Tommy Lee Jones, still riding off the high of his starring role in the Fugitive, and then Jim Carrey at his comedic height just a year after the release of not one but three of his most iconic films: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber! Oh yeah and let’s swap out the director, the lead, the love interest, and paint the whole film in neon. These things aren’t meant to be dark, gritty, adult films! They’re comic book films for god’s sakes! We gotta sell toys to kids!

But here’s the thing Supercultists: If you’re going to be this campy you have to be either funny or endearing. Carrey carried Batman Forever and killed it as a genuinely funny and threatening adaptation of the Riddler. Danny DeVito, in his own gruesome way, made us feel for a Batman villain in a way that the batman animated series later sought to emulate with their reimagining of Mr. Freeze and the creation of Harley Quinn.

So, what happened? Was it overindulgence? Sure, scenes are campier and there are now not 2 but 3 villains: Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, and a neutered version of Bane who serves as a glorified mook for Ivy. Perhaps the concept of pushing the art style even further strained the bounds of reality? Sure, Gotham was larger than life in 19889, but the 1997 version has gigantic futurist statues holding up the buildings as if Gotham was constructed on the corpses of a race of colossi. Perhaps the film lost some of the comedic charm of its predecessors. At last count Mr. Freeze utters something like 27 ice puns throughout the film and at times it can be difficult to discern whether or not the film is being ridiculous on purpose. The opening fight scene looks like Batman on Ice with the heroes literally clicking their heels together to activate ice skate boots.

Perhaps the problem is higher up than that… Was it the studio pressure to make the film more “toyetic”? The film’s design seems catered to the toy market with every character having a wacky light-up vehicle, set piece, or gadget that could function as an action figure. Batman’s new car features a transparent hood so that audiences can see the colorful spinning bat-engine as if hypnotizing children and adults alike into emptying their wallets at the nearest department store this Christmas. For crying out loud Poison Ivy even has a line “I’m a lover, not a fighter That’s why every Poison Ivy action figure comes complete with him!” *points to Bane* Perhaps it was simply cost? In their bid to get even more top-billed Hollywood names for the latest and greatest (read: only, unless you count things like Spawn) comic book film, Arnold Schwarzenegger was reputed to have earned $25 million for his approximate 25 minute on-screen role as Mr. Freeze, basically a million a minute. Not to mention Uma Thurman, the poster girl for Pulp Fiction, and the, at the time, up and coming George Clooney.

The whole film cost an estimated $125 million and was a modest commercial success but was a spectacular critical flop. With a 3.7 on IMDB and an 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s no surprise that the film killed the batman film series and nearly killed the entire superhero film genre. The film was voted #1 in Empire magazine’s “50 Worst Movies Ever”, #5 in Entertainment Weekly’s Top 25 Worst Sequels Ever Made, and won a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress for Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl (as well as 10 other Razzie nominations for everything from Worst Picture and Worst Director to Worst Screen Couple and Worst Original Song). Not Joel Schumacher or George Clooney defend the film anymore. When filming was over, George Clooney reportedly quipped, “I think we just killed the series.” He’s even been known to refund people who saw the film and has called the film a “waste of money” in spite of his admittance that it was the biggest break he ever had as a then TV star making the jump to Hollywood.

But we here at Supercult know it’s not the worst film (we’ve seen A LOT worse). At the very least it’s entertaining at times, hilarious at others, and always a feast for the eyes. Even now we can see the 90s superhero film influence on modern pop culture. The next few superhero films such as Sam Rami’s Spider-Man series still attempted to recreate the earnest wackiness of Tim Burton’s series while attempting to avoid the cautionary tale of Batman and Robin. Grittier remakes of batman still pay homage to Tim Burton’s Batman in their aesthetics, their music, and their tone.

Batman and Robin may be the worst batman film ever, but that makes it the best Supercult Batman film ever, bat nipples and all.

This is why Superman works alone! The Supercult show is proud to present Batman and Robin!

    Batman & Robin Howdy all you Supercultists out there on the interwebz! I’m Bad Movie Professor Cameron Coker (BS in “Bat Nipples” with a minor in “Ice Puns”) and I’ll be posting my hype-tacular speeches every week along with some long lost speeches from past Supercult Shows!